Perception of human manipulation based on contact state transition

A direct teaching method is effective for multi-fingered robot hand designed similar to human´s hand structure. To achieve an instinctive teaching, it is necessary to perceive manipulation patterns by observing a human hand. In this paper, a perception system of human manipulation is developed as a part of direct teaching system for multi-fingered robot hand. Conventional perception systems have difficulties in perceiving complex manipulations obtained by dextrous finger actions due to the low accuracy of the CyberGlove. This paper proposes an operation measurement system using an object that is specially designed for teaching. This object consists of a six-degree-of-freedom position/orientation sensor and a tactile sensor sheet. This paper also proposes a method of spotting perception by observing a change of the contact state of the palm surface. The effectiveness of this method is confirmed by experiments.